Nik Karter - The Golden Serpent

Like a green plague, the counterfeit five-dollar bills flowed over the United States. They inundated the country like a vast and secret horde of locusts each one had to be sought out in its hiding place and killed. And, even when at last the alarm was out, there was no stopping them. Still they came. Not only in the United States, but the world over. Anywhere, everywhere, where the U.S. dollar was in demand, be the demand covert or open, there that same dollar was now suspect. They were exquisite forgeries, so nearly perfect only an expert could tell they were not real. And many of the experts had been fooled.

Finally, in desperation that was near panic, the Treasury had to warn the country at large. Local and regional measures could not cope. The large and efficient body of T-men were powerless. In an admission of near defeat the Secretary of the Treasury went on the air, on all networks, radio and TV, and spoke to the public. Accept no fives, give none, keep what you have until further notice. There was no indication of when that notice would come. Secrecy descended. Washington was sitting on the matter.

In the confines of that Potomac city, in the secret places where policies are made and decisions rendered, the cauldron of apprehension boiled and bubbled.

It was a seething day in Washington. The city was living up to its name of Hell on The Potomac. Normally well-groomed men went about in shirtsleeves and women wore as little as decency required at times not that and everywhere the asphalt ran in black rivers and people had faces like wilted lettuce. But in a certain secret room in the Treasury Building it was cool and comfortable, the air-conditioners hummed, and more than a score of worried men sat around a huge U-shaped table and turned the air blue with tobacco smoke and subdued profanity. In a figurative anteroom a great many types of hats and caps would have been represented.

Nick Carters boss, the dour Hawk, with his inevitable unlit cigar drooping from thin lips, was watching and listening and saying nothing. About his sparse figure, encased now in a rumpled seersucker suit, there was an attitude of waiting. This meeting, he knew, was only one of many. There had been others, there would be more. It would be a little time yet, Hawk thought now, but in the end he knew what it would come to. There was a certain smell about it. Hawks mouth, cracked and parched from the heat, tightened about his cigar. It was going to be a shame to call Nick Carter back from Acapulco. For a second Hawk let his attention wander from the matter at hand he wondered what Nick was doing at the moment. Then he brushed the idle thought away he was too old, and too busy, to think of such matters. He brought his mind back to the affair at hand.

On the table before each man there was a five-dollar bill. Now one of the men picked up the bill in front of him and examined it again with a glass. There was a battery of small lamps mounted on the table beside him ultras and infras of various types and he passed the bill under the lights as he studied it. His mouth was pursed, his forehead creased, as he continued his agonized perusal. There had been a little mosquito buzz of talk around the table, now it gradually ceased and the silence grew as the man still studied the bill. All eyes were on him.

Finally the man took the glass from his eye and flung the bill down on the table. He looked around at the waiting faces. I say again, he told them. My final decision this bill was made from genuine United States Treasury plates. It is absolutely flawless. Only the paper betrays it and the paper is very, very good.

Across the table another man looked at the speaker. He said, You know that is impossible, Joe. You know our security measures. Anyway its such an old plate a serial of 1941. As a matter of fact it was destroyed just after Pearl Harbor. No, Joe, youve just got to be wrong. Nobody, nothing, could steal a set of plates from the Treasury. Anyway weve checked all that a dozen times the plates were destroyed. All the people involved, both in making and destroying those plates, are dead now. But weve gone into the records so thoroughly that there cant be any doubt about the matter. Those plates were destroyed!

The man who had last examined the bill picked it up again. He gazed from it to the man across the table. In that case theres a genius somewhere in the world. An engraver who has copied the genuine to absolute perfection.

Down the table another man spoke up. Thats impossible. A set of plates is a work of art it can never be perfectly duplicated again.

The expert let the five-dollar bill flutter to the table. He looked up and down the table for a moment, then said, In that case, gentlemen, we are dealing with black magic!

There was a long silence. Then some wag spoke up. If theyre so damned good why dont we just accept them? Funnel billions into the economy.

His sally did not bring much of a laugh.

The weary looking man, who was chairing the conference from a raised desk in the slot of the U-shaped table, rapped a gavel. This is not a matter for levity, gentlemen. Unless we can find the source of these bills and destroy those plates, and very soon, we are in serious trouble. We are, indeed, already in very serious trouble. Millions of our citizens have been bilked, more will be, and that is only in this country.

The man sitting next to Hawk asked, Whats the latest figure, sir?

The chairman picked up a piece of paper from his desk and glanced at it. He sighed. By computer, and this includes extrapolation, there is now, or soon will be, more than a billion dollars worth of these bad bills in circulation. He took off his old-fashioned pince-nez and rubbed at the red marks on his nose. You can understand, gentlemen, the enormity of the task ahead of us. Even if we could stop the flow of these bad bills this afternoon, we would still have the gigantic job of rooting them all out and destroying them.

We might, someone said, make do without five-dollar bills for the next ten years or so.

The chairman gave the speaker a hard look. I will not dignify that with a reply, sir. Our first, our foremost and most urgent task, is to find the source of these bills and wipe it out. But that is not our province. Not at all. I am sure that the agencies involved are already taking steps. Meeting adjourned, gentlemen. He rapped his gavel.

As he filed out of the room Hawk thought: I knew it. I knew it in these brittle old bones. Its going to turn out to be an AXE job yet. This is too big for even the CIA they havent got Nick Carter.

As he stepped into the blazing July day and donned his brown straw hat he was thinking: Nearly a billion bucks already. My God! What an operation! No wonder the T boys and the Secret Service cant handle it.

He made his way down Pennsylvania Avenue, his heels sinking into asphalt that had the quality of hot mud. His keen, old-fashioned razor of a mind was macerating the problem from every angle. He was enjoying himself. This was the sort of challenge he liked and understood. As he avoided a group of teen-age girls in shorts and bras that would not have been permitted on a beach, he thought: there are only two counterfeiters in the world big enough to rig a deal like this. I wonder which one it is the Bear or the Dragon?

Hawk decided not to call Nick back yet. Let Number One Boy frolic a bit longer on the Acapulco beach. Killmaster had earned this vacation a thousand times over. Hawk rounded into Dupont Circle and headed for his office hidden in the labyrinth of the Amalgamated Press and Wire Service. It wouldnt do any harm, he told himself, to put a few wheels in motion. AXE hadnt been called in yet. Not yet. But it would be. For a moment, as he waited for an elevator, he resembled an old forester sizing-up the tree.